Advances in medical research and the successful development of new, improved diagnostic tools and therapeutic agents are often dependent on the ability to screen thousands of clinical samples for molecular markers in a high-throughput fashion. Tissue microarrays can include hundreds or even thousands of tiny discs (approximately 1 mm in diameter, for example) of tissue specimens, fixed and arranged on a single microscopic slide. Currently available arraying tools provide means to generate thousands of copies of this kind of slide.
However, the equipment currently available to make tissue microarrays can be quite complex and expensive (especially the automated tools), and thus is often beyond the resources of many researchers. Thus, a need continues to exist for inexpensive, simple techniques and devices for making tissue microarrays.